It's November.

It's fucking November.  I knew quite well that November was coming.  And I knew also, because my email has been blown up by them, what November means.  I hadn't made a decision one way or the other, but it seemed like a No.  I wasn't thinking about a story, I was thinking "Hey, you need to finish the Verse before you go off and start something new."

yep. that's what I was thinking.  but now I want to jump right into Spencer's story.  what comes after the Verse.  What connects to the Apocalypse stories (WHICH AREN'T EVEN DONE, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!! STOP THIS AT ONCE!)... did you hear something...?

So I signed up for Nano.  I didn't even sign up last year.  But an update to the site now means you can save your stories' synopses and excerpts for all the years you participated!!  I want to go back in there and fill them in.  I don't have my original synopses, but it'll be fun to rewrite them.

Of course I had to goof off yesterday on Halloween instead of working.  on this file which turns out is easier than pie.  but I still got two hours on top of the half hour left that were assigned for today.  hopefully I can get some writing done, and also the amount of work I need to make The Husband not stab me with his knives of "you're not making enough money" fury...

Working From Home

I've been working writing into my working from home.  The daughter gets up at 7:45 so sometimes i stop working in the morning long enough to type something up that's been written down.

Just now, i figured something out that was causing a block in the verse.  i feel like i'm always saying that.  It has to do with the running away factor.  I could always ask myself too many questions about this.  why didn't he do this?  why didn't she do that?

and it all happened while i was typing up chapter three and rather than make Anka friendly, i made her suspicious.  it all fell into place.

i worked it out in my head while i was doing the dishes.  i wonder if i'll remember it later.  there are some notes, but not as beautiful as it was in my head.

Dreaming...

I joined writing.com.

I wanted something else, besides author's den.  Because I did not want to take my old teenage/early 20s writing down, but I want to post the Verse without it being attached to it directly to the older stories and whatnot.

A fresh start.

Though, it's sort of backwards.  Author's den seems the more professional site, while writing.com is more social network-y.  it seems the younger self should use this.  but then again.

Dreaming. 

I'm dreaming often and in detail of the boy I loved in high school. the past few have even referenced the fact, me telling him that I've been dreaming about him at some point in our odd-normal dreamtime adventure.

Is it strange to think that I love him still.  I mean I don't know him. I haven't seen him since graduation day.  But my heart feels just as strongly connected to him, despite all these years as it feels to the only boy from my HS that I actually... dated? I don't know.  I love him, whatever it was we did... and whatever it was that part of it hardly matters.  Because we were friends and can still have a nothing but friendly relationship.  I try to be just quiet enough, though, so his adorable girlfriend does not get it into her head to cut me.

Because I feel with these two boys, whether there was a romantic connection to them or not, I love them.  They made an impact on me and my heart cannot forget them.  The boy I loved, he cannot be so different from what he was... we don't change that much.  So I do not doubt that my love of him in the past can translate through to still loving him to this day, whether I've shared two words with him in 11 years or not.

and the funny thing is...

I really don't have much of the same to say about the two guys who were actually my boyfriends...

I love that my husband was my friend first.

In the Morning, With the Sun Coming Up

I have 14 minutes before I have to start getting ready for work.  Work at the hated out-of-home job where I WONT BE MUCH LONGER!!! my application for individual health insurance got approved.  it's expensive, but actually not as much, for the three of us, as i'm paying already through work for just the daughter and I.  So.

I just wanted to pop in to say some things, because I've been wanting to.  But we've been so busy moving to the new house, and changing things in the new house that there's been little time for blogging about writing.  and there's been little time for writing.  little, but not none.

I just went and checked in the last few posts I've made and holy cow! off topic much!?  but that's okay. because everything that is writing is on topic.

I must have mentioned it, because I remember typing the words "I'm naming them in the same way as the big stories"  The little stories.  the pre-stories.  the "It begins for all of them when they're children" stories.

Most of those are done.  I have dropped one from my list of stories to-do, deciding it didn't really fit with what I was doing.  I have yet to finish Edonith's story, The Healer; i'm not yet sure what is going to happen there.  I've gotten as far as describing his home world, which I've never done before, and begun a bit about his mother, but then I got stuck.

I'm also stuck with Carrie and Daniel, The Dreamers, though I know exactly what I want to happen.  I just haven't found the doorway into it yet.  i'm not worried.

Late in the writing-of-children-stories game I decided I wanted something from Milah's point of view.  surprisingly it didn't end up so.  She's in it, sure, but it's from Boss' point of view.  The Seer looks at Milah by the person who knew her best before all the crazy shit happened that my stories revolve around, though he's reflecting after the crazy shit, but in a time before all the children come together to save the day.

I look back further into my blog posts and no, I don't see it.  I don't see any mention of what i'm doing right now.  Shoot.  where do I think I wrote that down?

Anyhow.  what i'm doing.  I'm writing these short little stories.  flash fiction, I suppose they could be called.  They're focused on my main characters as youngsters.  Daniel and Carrie, The Dreamers.  Anka and Prin, The Orphans.  Nesris and Nasinair (perhaps my favorite one, and the first one I finished) The Royals.  Loki and his brothers, The Pack.  Edonith and... his mother?, The Healer.  And finally Milah and Yemar and Boss, The Seer.

it introduces them all as kids, before they meet.  it solidifies their personalities and the relationships that were the formation of who they are later.  The stories I want to use as sort of teasers not only to get people interested in the bigger overall epic, but also as something to keep me motivated while i'm outside of the stories myself, working on other  real-life (and therefore less important) stuff.  I want to post them on Author's Den.  but also, I want to not post them on Author's Den.  I want somewhere new, where I don't have a whole batch of old stuff... stuff from high school even, lingering around.  I don't know.

and I also want to eventually compile them into one batch and Smash them.  But I have so much to Smash!!

A few weeks ago the husband bought "me" a tablet for "my birthday" which isn't even for another 8 days.  he just wanted a tablet.  I use it the least of the three of us.  But I did use it to completely revise and input edits into Letters from the Desert.  And it was amazing.  it's a little small, wish he would've gotten a bigger sized screen; my fingers are so big I mistype sometimes.  but it was such quick and uncumbersome work to fill in revisions instead of having the laptop and my notebook.  Really.  Wonderful.

I'm out of time, but it seems like there's a lot to say.

Hopefully all this work-from-home full-time thing works out.  because still, some of my time will be devoted to writing.  I hope.  I hope.

Errors and Flaws in Mid-World.

I have another post i need to write, but i have the idea that the work of it is not yet finished so i guess that post can wait, though it's already been waiting long and long.

So, now for something completely different.

I recently finished reading Stephen King's Dark Tower epic.  Again.  I have read it so often that i lost count of the actual number at seven.  And that was years and how many rereads ago?  It's not the only book i've read over and over (or plan to continue to read over in the course of my life).  Bill Watson's A Dog Called Kitty was perhaps the first.  Mary Brown's The Unlikely Ones and Meredith Anne Pierce's Darkangel Trilogy still make me cry every time.  A Prayer For Owen Meany and Pride and Prejudice.  Another enormous-pile-of-books epic made up of Robin Hobb's Farseer, Liveship Traders, and Tawny Man trilogies (i'm not a fan of the dragon books that follow, say sorry).  But still, i think that Roland Deschain of Gilead will bring me back most often.

I remember being in high school, stuck on the road outside of the Emerald City-like castle on the Topkea Interstate just passing out of Captain Tripps territory, now finally back in Mid-World and my heart heavy yet from Susan's death with no next book in sight.  I was devouring his other works looking for those connections we (my dad and i) were just beginning to notice (for this was in the years before the internet where everything is now connected and explained with a quick query of a search engine).  And then i heard the news that Stephen King had been struck by a van while out for a walk near his home.  My very first thought was, "What about Roland!?"

I have seen critiquers on the internets who proclaim that King having put himself in the story to help (or hinder) Roland along is a cop-out and shoddy storytelling.  I think those people are new to Roland's qust and never read the forewords and afterwords of the early edition printings.  In these King himself claims he does not know where the story has come from or where it is going.  He doesn't know who the girl in the window is, he doesn't think he likes Roland all that much. That he feels as if he is telling the story, not crafting it himself.

I understand that feeling.  i often feel as if i have no control over what i write.  maybe that is why I was not surprised and actually pleased by the turn of events that brought Gan's navel, Stephen King into the turning of the wheel of Ka.  It's really the only way it made sense.

Now, there are countless websites out there (as i said before) that draw the comparisons and connetions between King's books and within the Epic itself.  that's not what my list is about.  My list is about the errors.

I understand that this was the work of three decades and things are bound to get through (although that doesn't explain why most of them are in book 7!!) And i'm not doing this to be mean or vindictive or anything of that sort.  I just tend to notice these types of things, especially because i've read it so many times that i don't even really have to.  I can just close my eyes and think about it.

My dad used to have a book of continuity flaws for Star Trek TNG that we would read before watching each episode in his VHS collection.  It's fun!

So, my list of 15 plot flaws.  Some of them are minor, some of them are a bit forgiveable.  I was aiming to find 19 because then it would be a sign that they were meant to be there.  But who knows.  maybe next time i read it i will fill out the list.  Hell, two or three of these 15 i found in this current reread.  So here goes.  *NOTE* There will be spoilers (beyond those i've already mentioned above :P)

1.  When the lobstroscity bites off Roland's toe it takes a hunk of his boot and chews it up, later throws it aside.  Roland continues to wear "worn down boots" for the remainder of the series.  With a hole in it??

2.  When he reaches the Western Sea after crossing the Mohaine Desert he turns north as he travels, searching for doors.  He mentions several times that the ocean is on the right and the land is on the left.  That means he's moving south.

3.  When i look i can't find it, but i SWEAR the first time Eddie is introduced he is a "21-year-old heroin addict."  Either way, when he introduces himself to Odetta he is 23.  Following no more than 6 months in the woods following book 2 he is 25 and when he dies he's 26 (which is okay).

4.  I don't believe there is a single mention of Roland's hat until it nearly flies off his head crossing the bridge into Lud.  (maybe i'm wrong on this, but every time i read that part i'm startled. like what!? hat!?)

5.  Somewhere around The Wastelands or Wizard and Glass Roland takes a "leftover asprin."  There was no left over asprin.  He took all the asprin Eddie got him from the airport.  And when he went to the pharmacy in Mort's body he only got the antibiotic he needed.

6.  The rose in the abandoned lot in New York is on Keystone Earth.  So Jake has to have come from Keystone Earth.  Since Jake follows Eddie and Henry to the house on Dutch Hill and once he's pulled through the door Eddie remembers a boy in sunglasses following him that day then Eddie too must have come from Keystone Earth.  His whole argument over whether Co-op City is in Brooklyn or the Bronx is needless and nonsensical.

7.  While Roland, Cuthbert and Alain are in Mejis they have carrier pigeons, but they also receive messages from their fathers back in Gilead from incoming carrier pigeons.  This is not how carrier pigeons work.  For their fathers to be able to send messages they would need to have ridden out to Mejis and brought back to Gilead with them pigeons that were raised and lived on the abandoned ranch where the boys stayed during their visit.

8.  Susannah's legs are cut off in the subway accident above the knee, except for at the very beginning of book seven when it is below the knee.

9.  At Pere's house in Calla Bryn Sturgis both Eddie and Susannah are said to have been "standing at the window" and then "walk to the bed." (slightly forgiveable; Susannah had the loan of Mia's legs for much of this book and the next.  it's easy to forget).

10.  In the beginning of Ted Brautigan's recording he says, "...looking for the writer?  The one who created me after a fashion?" speaking of Stephen King and Roland and Eddie's search for him.  Later the tet "decides" for themselves that King must have written Ted.  (it was a four hour recording, slightly forgiveable).  Also, Ted mentions having lifted information from Trampas' mind about how the singer of Gan's song has quit singing and needs to die, yet does not connect that to his knowledge of King and his creation and importance to all of them.

11.  Roland watching Teds tape fixedly.  Three paragraphs of narrative (and not Ted's summarized story) later he "had been cleaning his guns."

12.  In The Whitelands Roland is teaching Susannah to skin and tan hides.  granted it's a new, quick brain slurry method but much of this she should already know from their post-beach-doors pre-shardik-attack time.  "...learned more about making hide garments than she ever would have believed."

13.  In Bill's plow Susannah plays "Hey Jude."  She doesn't know who the Beatles are but by 1964 (the year she was drawn) they had become international stars (though Hey Jude was 1970 so she shouldn't know that song in particular). Also, "Roland seems to know... words he knew were different."  This has already been discussed when the tet was whole and he was telling his story of Tull; a comparisson of the different worlds they've come from and the overlaps.

14.  When Patrick draws Susannah's picture and she compliments him he smiles; a poor choice of words that she "could have eaten that smile up," considering what Dandelo did to Patrick.

15.  At the Tower the Crimson King is throwing sneetches.  "unless he can throw more than 12 at a time..." Roland thinks he will be safe.  Wrong.  Six.  Roland has only one gun (Susannah took the other through the door with her) and only one hand to shoot with anyhow.

There.  That's the end.  But it's not.  Cuz Ka's a wheel and i'll be back.

That may be my longest post ever.